A doctor at the Gaza Strip's Al Shifa hospital said on Friday Israeli forces had "found nothing" during searches of the hospital complex, and that food and water were running out.

Scenes from Al Shifa hospital amid Israel's ground operation in Gaza City.

Doctor Ahmed El Mokhallalati told Reuters by telephone that despite the "difficult" conditions at the hospital, no babies had died there since Israeli troops entered it on Wednesday.

Israel says Hamas has a command centre underneath the hospital, an assertion the Palestinian militant group denies. Reuters has been unable to verify the situation at the hospital independently.

"It’s a totally terrifying situation, here the Israeli tanks and the Israeli troops have been moving within the hospital area, all over the hospital," said Mokhallalati, a surgeon born in Ireland who trained in Cairo and practiced in London.

"The situation is totally difficult. They are shooting all the time, all the areas."

The Israeli military said on Thursday it had uncovered a Hamas tunnel shaft and a vehicle with weapons at the Al Shifa hospital complex. It also made public videos and photographs to support its statement.

Speaking in English, Mokhallalati said: "They have found nothing. They have found no single resistance. No single gunshot, against them within the hospital area."

The hospital, packed with patients and displaced people and struggling to keep operating, has become a focus of global concern.

Mokhallalati said the Israeli military had provided some supplies since entering the hospital but that it was insufficient.

"What happened is that the people, we run out of food, we ran out of drinking water," Mokhallalati said. "And then, yesterday, they arranged some, just some food and water, which is very, very minimal, which doesn't cover, maybe 40% of the number of people around here."

Dr Mohamed Tabasha, head of the paediatric department at Al Shifa, said on Monday three newborn babies had died as problems mounted at the hospital, and that the 36 remaining newborns were at risk.

"As of yesterday they were 36, luckily no one has lost their lives," he said on Friday.

Al Shifa: Patients at Gaza’s largest hospital ‘screaming from thirst’ as water and oxygen run out.

The director of Gaza’s largest hospital said patients were “screaming from thirst” as its water and oxygen supplies have run out.

Muhammad Abu Salmiya said Israeli forces had blown up the Al Shifa Hospital’s main water line. He described conditions inside the hospital as “tragic”.

Israel is still conducting search operations inside Gaza’s largest hospital having sent troops inside on Wednesday. Israel claims Hamas is operating a command centre in tunnels beneath the health facility, allegations which have been denied by doctors and the Gaza health ministry.

“The conditions are tragic and those in the hospital are screaming from thirst,” Mr Abu Salmiya told the BBC.

“Sniping operations continue, no one can move from one building to another, and we have lost communication with our colleagues,” said Mr Abu Salmiya.

Israel’s military earlier said the body of one of the hostages, kidnapped by Hamas after the group’s 7 October attacks, was found in a building near the hospital.

Late on Thursday the IDF released videos and photographs of what it described as an “operational tunnel” within the Al Shifa Hospital complex, as well as footage of a vehicle containing weapons. Earlier it released videos of duffel bags with guns that it said were found inside the hospital.

Hamas said the earlier video was staged, while other Palestinians said that – even if they were real – they show nothing like the militant command centre claimed by Israel to justify raiding the hospital.

“These are weak pretexts. There is nothing for the resistance inside medical institutions,” said Dr Nahed Abu Taaema, the director of the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, who said medics were alarmed for their colleagues at Al Shifa after losing contact with them since Wednesday.

The health ministry in Gaza said Israeli bulldozers damaged portions of the southern entrance to the medical complex.

Ashraf al-Qudra, a spokesperson for Gaza’s health ministry, said “thousands of women, children, sick and wounded are in danger of death” as Israeli military raids on the hospital have continued.

The World Health Organisation has joined other humanitarian organisations, including Doctors Without Borders, to demand an end to assaults on healthcare facilities in Gaza and have called for an immediate ceasefire.

This comes as Israeli airstrikes continued throughout Gaza on Thursday, and the enclave experienced a widespread communications blackout due to the depletion of fuel for the generators of the primary telecommunications provider.

“All telecom services” in the Gaza strip were out of service, according to statements from the two major Palestinian mobile networks Jawwal and Paltel on Thursday, “as all energy sources sustaining the network have been depleted, and fuel was not allowed in”.

On Thursday, Israeli forces said they found the body of 65-year-old Yehudit Weiss, who was abducted from Be’eri kibbutz near the Gaza border by Hamas on 7 October.

Weiss’s body was found in a building near the al-Shifa hospital, said officials of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). She had been receiving cancer treatment, according to Israeli forces.

“The body of Yehudit Weiss, who was abducted by the Hamas terrorist organisation, was extracted by IDF troops from a structure adjacent to the Shifa hospital in the Gaza Strip and was transferred to Israeli territory,” said a spokesperson.

“In the structure in which Yehudit was located, military equipment including Kalashnikov rifles and RPGs were also found,” said the spokesperson.

Weiss’s husband, Shmulik, was reportedly among the estimated 1,200 Israelis killed during the 7 October Hamas terror attack across southern Israel.

According to the Bring Them Home Now group, Weiss was without her medication when she was taken hostage by Hamas.

“Unfortunately, Yehudit was murdered by terrorists in Gaza and we did not get to her in time,” the IDF spokesperson told the media.

Since 7 October, at least 11,470 Palestinians have been killed in retaliatory strikes by Israel on Gaza. Reports said this figure has not been updated for a few days due to the collapse of the Gaza Strip’s health system amid Israel’s constant bombardment.

Meanwhile, it was reported that Israel has dropped leaflets in southern Gaza, advising Palestinian civilians to evacuate four towns situated on the eastern periphery of Khan Younis city in southern Gaza.

Israel had initially told civilians to flee northern Gaza, and tens of thousands of Palestinians had migrated to UN-run shelters and family homes in recent weeks.

Israeli ex-PM claims Hamas command centre is in the south of Gaza not al-Shifa Hospital.

"Every citizen, every baby, every child, every child that is killed, it's terrible, okay?" he told correspondent Shona Murray.

Olmert also claimed Hamas' underground command centre was based in Khan Yunis, a city in the southern Gaza Strip.

For the past week, Israeli troops have been raiding the al-Shifa Hospital, the largest medical complex and central hospital north of the strip, with intel, they say, that the command centre is there.

The military said late on Thursday it had uncovered a Hamas "tunnel shaft" and a vehicle with weapons there.

But according to Olmert, "we haven't yet even come to the heart of this operation".

"Khan Younis, which is in the southern part of Gaza Strip, is the real headquarters of Hamas.

"They have the leadership, they are hiding, they have the bunkers, they have the command positions, they have the launching pads."

Bomb craters and bodies as Gazans evacuate hospital.

Columns of Palestinians, some sick, some wounded made their way out of Gaza's largest hospital Saturday, walking for hours through the debris of war as they sought a new refuge.

The Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City had been the focus of an Israeli special forces operation for days, searching for the Hamas command centre Israel insists is concealed beneath. Both the militants and hospital managers deny any such base exists.

Instructions to evacuate were issued Saturday, prompting the exodus of hundreds of patients and displaced towards the supposedly safer south of the Palestinian territory.

"The streets were destroyed, there were bomb craters and a lot of decomposing bodies" near the hospital, said Samia al-Khatib, 45, who left Al-Shifa along with her husband and 15-year-old daughter.

"There were scenes of horror, a real massacre," she told AFP.

Some clutched makeshift white flags as they made their way between dead bodies and heavily armed Israeli soldiers flanked by tanks and armoured vehicles.

Along a road lined by destroyed buildings and charred vehicles, children walked barefoot, elderly men leant on canes and the few who could afford it used horse-drawn carts to move south, where Israel has urged civilians to go.

One man carried his disabled daughter on his back. Another carried his injured daughter in his arms, a plaster cast on her tiny leg.

- 'It was hell' -

The hospital director said the Israeli army ordered the emptying of the facility.

Israel's military denied any such instructions, saying instead it had "acceded to the request of the director" to allow more civilians to leave.

At 8:00 am, the loudspeakers blared and an Israeli soldier ordered everyone to evacuate "within an hour" or risk bombardment, said Rami Sharab, 24, who was stuck in the hospital for some 20 days.

"I was one of the first to come out," said Sharab, who had sought refuge in the hospital complex with his family after his neighbourhood in Gaza City was bombed.

"We heard shots in the air and artillery fire."

Israel accuses Hamas of mounting attacks from hideouts under the health complex, and its troops have been combing its buildings.

Israel has vowed to "crush" Hamas in response to the group's October 7 attack, when it broke through Gaza's militarised border to kill about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and take around 240 hostage, according to Israeli officials.

The army's air and ground campaign has killed 12,300 people, including more than 5,000 children, according to Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007.

In all, more than 1.6 million people have been displaced in Gaza, around two-thirds of the territory's population, according to the United Nations.

The United Nations estimated 2,300 patients, staff and displaced Palestinians were sheltering at Al-Shifa before Israeli troops moved in on Wednesday.

During the operation Israeli soldiers interrogated patients in the compound's courtyard, some left naked as soldiers checked them for weapons or explosives, witnesses said.

"It was hell," said Sharab. "They stripped us, searched us and beat us."

WHO says Al-Shifa hospital is a ‘death zone’ as officials are shown mass grave.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) described Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital as a “death zone” on Saturday after officials were shown a mass grave with more than 80 bodies at the site.

The UN agency has urged an immediate evacuation of the facility which was raided by the Israeli military on Wednesday as it carries out what it calls a “targeted operation against Hamas”.

Israel has yet to provide significant evidence to back up its claims that the terror group has been using Al-Shifa as a base from which to conduct major operations in Gaza.

A team led by WHO visited Al-Shifa on Saturday to carry out a humanitarian assessment. The team included public health experts, logistics officers and security staff from various UN departments.

Due to security risks, the team was able to spend only an hour inside the hospital.

Signs of shelling and gunfire were evident and the team saw a mass grave at the entrance of the hospital and was told more than 80 people were buried there.

Hundreds of patients and medical staff left Gaza’s largest hospital on Saturday with one evacuee describing a panicked and chaotic scene as Israeli forces searched and face-scanned men among those leaving and took some away.

The evacuation, which Israel says was voluntary, left behind only Israel Defence Forces and a small number of health workers to care for those too sick to move.

“We left at gunpoint,” Mahmoud Abu Auf told the Associated Press by phone after he and his family left the crowded hospital. “Tanks and snipers were everywhere inside and outside.” He said he saw Israeli troops detain three men.

Israel’s military claims it was asked by the hospital’s director to help those who would like to leave to do so and that it did not order an evacuation.

But Medhat Abbas, a spokesman for the health ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza, said the military ordered the facility to be cleared and gave the hospital an hour to get people out.

A doctor at the hospital, Ahmed Mokhallalati, said on social media that about 120 patients remained, including some in intensive care and premature babies, and that he and five other doctors were staying.

The IDF has recovered the bodies of two Israeli hostages found close to Al-Shifa and an cache of weapons it claimed to have found within the hospital itself.

The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the WHO statement or the visit.